Power in the Classroom

After reading Lisa Delpit's article "The Silenced Dialogue" I have been contemplating the way I will deal with power in the classroom. The focus of the article is the "culture of power" that exists in classrooms. It is clear that there is very real power in the classroom. Over the summer I have been grappling with the question of how to fairly distribute this power. At the current time I am still a bit of an idealist without any substantial teaching experience. I have told myself that it is important to let students control their own learning and empower students, by letting them control the classroom. As the summer has progressed I've realized the naivity of my ideas.

Delpit's article has led me to question many of the thoughts I've previously held about power in the classroom. In "The Silenced Dialogue" she states,
"Issues of power are enacted in the classroom. There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a culture of power. The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the culture of those who have power. If you are not already a participant in the culture of power being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier."
She goes on to discuss many teachers inability or unwillingness to acknowledge there power in the classroom.

One of my goals as a new teacher is that the experiences that students have in my classroom will empower them to continue on with their education. Delpit makes a fairly convincing argument that the best way I could empower my students is to inform them of the rules for participating in the "culture of power". Ideally I would like to destroy this power, or at least change it substantially so that classrooms become more democratic, but this ideal will likely not be reached in my first year as an Algebra teacher in Baltimore City. I will however do my best to make it clear to my students that their are certain things they need to be able to do to participate fully in our (the school's and society's) "culture of power". My ideas are continually shifting as to how I can best empower my students. As the school year rapidly approaches I hope I can prepare myself adequately to deal with the power I will have.

Highly Qualified

I've been meaning to reflect on the parts of the Baltimore City Teaching Residency(BCTR) I've participated in so far. I'm in the Math Immersion Program, which takes folks who aren't from a math background and trains them to become math teachers. This is done because Baltimore, like most cities has an enormous shortage in the number of qualified math teachers. The question yet to be answered is does this program bring in more qualified math teachers or just more bodies to fill rooms?
Today was the first day of the summer institute and it left me with a lot of questions about my status as a school teacher. A lot of the literature I have received through this program stresses the high need for qualified teachers in inner city schools, particularity in math and science. An article we read today cited a statistic that in schools with greater than 49 percent of the students on free lunch 40% of the math teachers were considered underqualified meaning they did not major or minor in the field they are teaching. In schools with less than 20% free lunch only 25% of math teachers were underqualified.*
BCTR and similar residency programs are designed to lessen the disparity in these statistics. My fear is that bringing me, with my bachelors degree in American History into a classroom to teach math is not helping this. The Maryland Board of Education has determined that after completing the Math Immersion program I will be considered highly qualified. Being highly qualified sounds nice, but ultimately it is a meaningless term that is easily circumvented to fill the real need for math teachers. While this program seems to be a reaction to necessity I am left wondering how the problem of underqualified teachers is going to be solved and if I am part of the problem.
Up until this point I've felt pretty comfortable with the idea of teaching math. In the fall I will most likely be teaching 9th grade algebra. For the most part my anxieties about teaching do not revolve around the content. Statistics about the problems created by underqualified individuals make me wonder if I will be a successful teacher. If I am what will this say about the importance of being highly qualified?

*The article I am citing is "Helping All Students Learn: CLosing the Achievement Gap" By Kati Haycock. The statistics I have cited come from page 16 of this article.